Capers, William, D.D., a bishop of the Method- ist Episcopal Church South, was bom in St. Thomas's Parish, S. C, Jan. 26, 1790. In 1805 he entered the sophomore class at the South-Carolina College, but left college before the time of graduation, and began the study of law. He entered the itinerant ministry in the South-Carolina Conference in 1809, and located in 1815. He was readmitted to the Conference in 1818, and was first elected to Gefieral Conference in 1820, and was sent as delegate from the American Method- ist Church to the British Wesleyan Conference in 1828. H is subsequent posts of duty were, professor of Evidences of Christianity in Columbia College, 1885; editor of the Southern Christian Advocate, 1886-40; missionary secretary of the southern division of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1840-44 ; superintendent of colored missions in the Southern States hi 1844. In May, 1844, Dr. Capers attended the General Con- ference held at New York as one of the delegates of the South-Carolina Conference. This was the year in which the great anti-slavery agitation in the Methods ist Episcop^ Church came to its crisis in tbe division of that body. Dr. Capers took the Southern view of the question, and from that time till the close of his life he was identified with the Methodist Episcopal Church South. At the General Conference of that Church held in 1844 he was elected bishop. The re- * mainder of his life was spent in the discharge of the bishop's oflice, -^phich he filled with pre-eminent digni- ty, diligence, aiid success. Dr. Capen came of a Hu- guenot family, and his father did gallant service in the Revolution. His house was one of the homes of Asbury and the early Methodist preachen. In the ministiy his rise was rapid, and his useflilness and popularity con- stantiy increased. His eloquence in the pulpit was sanctified by the unction of the Holy Ghost, and, though generally smooth and graceful, was at times powerful, and even overwhelming. He was always refined and elevated in thought and life, and labored with earnest fidelity for his Master's cause. His activity of mind and perseverance, together with the weight of his mor- al power, gave him great influence in his Conference and in the Church. He died in Anderson, S. C, Jan. 29, 1855. He left no literary remains except an auto- biography (prefixed to Dr. Wightman*s lA/e of Ca- pers); Catechism* for the Negro Missions; Short Ser- mons and True Tales for Children (edited by Dr. Sum- mere, Nashville, 18roo).— Summere, Sketches of EnA- nent Itinerants, p. 75; Wightman, lAfe of W, Capers, D.D, (Nashville, 1859, 12mo); Sprague, Annals, vii, 460.
Cape TO'wn, the capital of the English posses- sions at the Cape of Good Hope, erected into a bish- op's see of the English Church in 1847. The see owes
CAPHAR.
102
CAPHETHRA
its existence to the mtmiflcence of Mi8#6urdettCoutts. The first bishop -was Robert Gray, D.D., of Stockton, consecrated at Westminster, June 29, 1847, who is still the incumbent. The bishop of Cape Town is the me- tropolitan of the Anglican (Uoceses in South Africa, of which, in 1867, there were the following, besides Cape Town : Natal, esUblished 1868 ; Mauritius, 1854 ; Gra- ham's Town, 1856 ; St. Helena, 1862 ; Orange River State, 1863; Central Africa, 1863. The Wesleyan missions in the district of Cape Town embraced, in 1866, 10 circuits, 25 chapels, 12 other preaching-places, 9 missionaries and assistant missionaries, 201 subordi- nate paid and unpaid agents, 1510 members, 211 on trial for membership, 2680 scholars in Sunday-schools, and 6988 attendants on public worship. The Roman Catholics have at Cape Town a vicar apostolic (bishop in partibus), whose diocese embraces about half a doz- en churches. — Landon, Eccl. Did. ii, 560. See Africa. Caphar- (the Latinized form of the Heb. prefix "*1B3, JTe/hr', the "construct form" of Kaphar% ^DS, Arom the root of the same form signifying " to cover," Gesenius, Thesatir, p. 707), one of the numerous words employed in the Bible (and still oftener in later or rabbinical Hebrew) to denote a village or collection of dwellings smaller than a city (Reland, PalcBtt, p. 516). See Ib-. Stanley proposes to render it by " hamlet" {Palest, App. § 87), to distinguish its occurrences from those of CkawaA, ChaUer, Bayitk, and other similar words. As an appellative it is found only three times : 1 Chron. xxvii, 25, Cant, vii, 11, and 1 Sam. vi, 18 (in the last the pointing being different, Ko'pher, *1Q9) ; but in neither is there anything to enable us to fix any special force to the word. In names of places, it occurs in Chephar-Ammoitai, Chbfhirah, Caphar-sala- MA, and those here following ; also Capernaum, Ca- PARCOTiA, etc. But the num ber of places compounded therewith mentioned in the Talmud shows that the name became a much commoner one at a time subse- quent to the Biblical history. See the words begin- ning with Kkphar-. In Arabic, the corresponding local epithet Kefr is in frequent use (see the lists in Robinson's Betearchei, iii, Append.). — Smith, s. v.
Caphar&bis (Ka0apaj3ic), a town of IdumsBa, with a very strong wall, surrendered by the citizens to Cerealis, the general of Vespasian, after a siege thus rendered unexpectedly short (Josephus, War^ iv, 9, 9). Reland (Palast. p. 684) thinks it the Kephar-BUh (q. V.) of the rabbins ; but Schwarz refers it to the Ke- phar-Abut (D13K IfiD) of the Jerusalem Talmud (Sanhedr, ii), and finds it in the well near Gedor, in Wady Surar (meaning apparently that marked on Van de Velde's Map a little south-east of Ekron), which he says is still called "the Spring of Abis." This posi- tion, however, seems too northerly.